The most recent winners of the Most Valued Project Award 2015 is a group of youngsters in Russia, who have been taking themselves to the streets with massive courage and an unflinching determination for enforcing traffic regulations. The rogue initiative is called the “Stop a Douche Bag Campaign”, and wins the Most Valued Project Award, and its 1000 euro’s to support their mission. Where in the West the idea of awarding youngster for honouring the rules would have been a hoax, the driving style of many drivers in the East is sadly unbound by respect for human life. And so, parks are overrun by assholes in cars claiming the public walking space as a driving road, making pedestrian roads unsafe to walk on. It’s dangerous. Ok. Sure. But much more than that: it is just rude, on a fundamental level. It gives a signal to all pedestrians they are at the homicidal whims of careless car-owners. Or “douchebags”, as they are called from now on.

And so this group of young activists, started to band together to form human blockades to send cars back, when caught red-handed by the group while illegally taking pedestrian roads and parks as a shortcut. The car drivers were given a choice to drive back the exact same way they came, or if they didn’t want to, to have a huge sticker pasted on the front window, stating “I am an asshole, I drive where want”. Or two, if they tried to run their car over the youngsters while trying. Doesn’t that type of bravery make you want to run to your local sticker-making shop and order a fresh bunch?

This concept of discontinuing the road of car-diving assholes, still seems like a fun job, until you see the actual footage, hours of it, of hundreds of Russian drivers becoming aggressive towards the youngsters, lying, threatening and fighting to keep their little shortcut. And it’s breath-taking to see different youngster standing strong, to gangsters with weapons, to populists with cigarettes, to mommy’s with fake excuses. But in none of the hours of footage we’ve seen, did the young activists falter, and fall short of enforcing what’s right from pre-agreed principles. In all cases, they stepped forward, using their bodies often as human shield for the blockade, and stickering cardrivers who were shouting death threats to them. We honour these guys, and some girls in there too, for their courage and bravery in continuing to form the blockades, even after the first dozen cars tried to overrun them. We honour them with an award, carrying a 1000 euro’s (circa 58000 Russian Ruble) to print more stickers. Or larger ones. Or ones that has more permanent glue. Or with whatever they think they need to put respect back on the Russian streets, in the way they feel doing it. Stop a Douchebag Campaigners; the Alert Fund for Youth has nominated and elected you to win the Most Valued Project award, you are the very first ever Russian winner, and we hope to see your style of courage enforced much more often on the Russian streets.